Stylos is the blog of Jeff Riddle, a Reformed Baptist Pastor in North Garden, Virginia. The title "Stylos" is the Greek word for pillar. In 1 Timothy 3:15 Paul urges his readers to consider "how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar (stylos) and ground of the truth."

Friday, June 30, 2017

Then Jesus turned, and
saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye? (John 1:38a).

Jesus turned to the two disciples of John the Baptist who began
to follow him and asked them a question. Jesus is the great asker of questions.
Men think they have questions for Jesus; let’s not forget that it is he who has
questions for us. What matters is not your investigation of Jesus but his
investigation of you.

These are the very first recorded words of Jesus in John’s
Gospel. These are the first “red letter” words in John. Of course, every word
in the Bible is a “red letter” word in that it is God-breathed by the triune
God. But the first recorded words of the incarnate Jesus recorded in a Gospel are
significant.

In Matthew, it comes in 3:15 when Jesus says to reluctant
John at his baptism: “Suffer it to be so for now: for thus it becometh us to
fulfill all righteousness.”

In Mark, it comes in 1:15 when Jesus preaches, “The time is
fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the
gospel.”

In Luke, it comes in 2:49 when the 12 year-old Jesus says to
Mary and Joseph in the temple where they had left him, “How is it that ye
sought me? Wist ye not [or, Did you not know] that I must be about my Father’s
business?”

The first recorded words of the Lord in John come in a
question posed to two men who begin to follow him: “What seek ye?” What are you
seeking? What are you looking for?

That is a great and fundamental spiritual question. Why would
any men seek to follow Christ? Are you seeking knowledge? Happiness?
Prosperity? Rest? Relief? Wisdom? There are many men who begin seeking after
Christ for all the wrong reason or for no purposeful reason at all. But then he
is so often so very gracious in that he gives them more than they ever could
have asked or imagined. He finds out seekers, even those who might be more than
little misguided in their seeking.

When we lived in post-communist Hungary in the early 1990s I
recall seeing a ubiquitous billboard advertising a newly opened Ikea
store. The billboard had an Ikea
catalogue on one side and a red-covered book with the title Marx, Das Kapital on the other. In between the
two books was the saying, in Hungarian, “Which makes your life better?” At that
time, the choice was clear for most Hungarians. They had given up on communism
and wanted to pursue fulfillment through Western materialism, as represented by
that catalogue.

Of course, I wanted to add a third book to that billboard.
The Bible. The only thing that will really make your life better is knowing the
God of the Bible. John wrote this Gospel so that those who read it might come
to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing they
might have life in his name (cf. John 20:31).

What are you seeking to make your life better? You will only
find real satisfaction if you seek Christ and follow him.

Thursday, June 29, 2017

I’m still working my way through Robert Letham’s Through Western Eyes: Eastern Orthodoxy: A
Reformed Perspective (Mentor, 2007). It includes an intriguing chapter
comparing Orthodox and Reformed views on Scripture and tradition (pp. 173-198),
in which Letham notes confusion, on both sides, about the term sola Scriptura.

Letham’s point is that the
popular modern concept of sola Scriptura
as a “right of private interpretation” was not a Reformation principle (see pp.
194-195). He adds: “To categorize Reformed theology as individualistic, with no
doctrine of the church, is an error of monumental proportions” (p. 195). See
similar reflections in Keith Mathison’s The
Shape of Sola Scriptura on the difference between the Reformers’ view
of sola Scriptura and modern individualistic
evangelical view of what he calls “solo” Scriptura.

In this year of the 500th anniversary of the
Reformation, many discussions on various points of Reformed theology and practice
are surfacing. I noticed that the May 26, 2017 issue of Christianity Today has an interview with church historian Mark Noll
titled, “The
Freedom and Chaos of Sola Scriptura” (BTW, I do not, in fact, subscribe to “Christianity
Yesterday,” as some derisively call it, but take a look at it, as well as the mainline The Christian Century, from time to time
when I visit the central library, and I just happened to thumb through this issue
last week). That article begins its discussion of the slogan by noting, “It has
been a hallmark of Protestantism for 500 years….” That may be true of the concept but Letham suggests that the actual slogan does not go back that far.

Letham comments:

In fact, this slogan cannot be traced
back to the sixteenth century; it was a much later concoction. Its intention
was not to suggest that only the text of the Bible was acceptable. Indeed, the
Reformers produced a wide range of new catechisms and confessions…. What they taught was that the Bible is the
supreme authority, and sits in judgement on the teaching of the church, not
vice versa (p. 175).

He later adds, regarding the term:

This is often taken to mean that the
Bible is to be the only source for theology. It is almost universally claimed
that it is one of the central pillars of the Reformation. However, there is not
evidence of such a slogan in the entire sixteenth century. It is probable that
it did not put in an appearance until the eighteenth century at the earliest.
Contrary to so much hot air, it is not
a Reformation slogan. When it was coined it was held to affirm that the Bible
is the highest court of appeal in all matters of religious controversy, which is what the Reformers and their
successors actually held.

So, Letham makes two interesting points:

First, historically, the exact term or
slogan sola Scriptura was not, in fact, coined
in the sixteenth century but in the eighteenth century (though Letham does not suggest
who first coined the term—that would be interesting to know).

Second, theologically, the Reformed concept
of sola Scriptura does not champion “private
interpretation.” It also does not suggest that the Bible is the only source for
theology but that it is the standard by which theology is rightly understood
and evaluated.

Saturday, June 24, 2017

The NA28 incorporated for the first time use of the CBGM from
the ECM, but only in the catholic epistles. The NA28 lists 33 changes from the
NA27 (pp. 50-51). Most of these are minor, but there at least two major
changes: 2 Peter 3:10 and Jude 5.

Note: The CBGM/ECM method will continue to be incorporated in
future edition of the modern critical text. Recent posts on the ETC blog
indicate two recent key developments coming out of Germany: (1) In June 2017
the Text und Textwert edition of Revelation was published (determining the
witnesses cited in the ECM and eventually bound in reduced form for the NA) (see
here); and (2) In August 2017 the two-volume ECM edition of Acts will be
released (see
here).

I.The issue: Jude 5:

The major change is the use of “Jesus” rather than “Lord.”

Compare (emphasis added):

Jude 5 KJV: I will therefore put you
in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of Egypt, afterward
destroyed them that believed not.

Jude 5 ESV: Now I want to remind you
, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus
who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did
not believe.

II.The external evidence: Jude 5:

There are some minor variations. A few mss. include the
conjunction oun (C, Psi, etc.) and
one ms. inserts “brethren [adelphoi]”
(p78).

The major variation is at the phrase “though ye once knew
this, how that the Lord” (KJV):

TR: eidotes humas hapax
touto hoti ho kurios

NA27: eidotes [humas]
panta hoti [ho] kurios hapax

NA 28: eidotes humas
hapax panta hoti Iesous

The apparatus of the NA 28 lists no less than 13 variations:

1.humas panta hoti kurios hapax (Sinaiticus)

2.humas hapax touto hoti ho kurios (1175, 1448, Byz)

3.hapax panta (touto: 5) hoti ho theos (C2, 5, vg mss)

4.hapax touto hoti ho kurios (307, 436, 642)

5.panta hoti ho theos hapax (442, 1243, 2492, vg mss, Syriac ph)

6.panta hoti ho (-Psi) kurios hapax (Psi, 1611, Syriac h)

7.hapax panta (pantas p72*) hoti theos
christos (p72)

8.hapax panta hoti (plus ho 33*) Iesous (A, 33, 81, 2344, vg)

9.panta hoti ho Iesous hapax (88, sa mss?, bo?)

10. panta hoti Iesous hapax (1739 txt, sa ms? bo? Origen 1739
mg)

11.hapax touto hoti
kurios Iesous (1735)

12.panta hapax gar Iesous
(1739 varia lectio)

13.humas hapax panta hoti
Iesous (B)

Note:

(1)The NA28 reading is found is exactly
found in only one ms: B [and there is no evidence that this reading was ever
copied];

(2)The main issue is the one acting (the
Lord or Jesus), but there are other variants. See this table:

Observations: There are only 8 papyri mss. of the catholic
epistles. Of those only 2 are of Jude; p72 (all of Jude); p78 (Jude 4-5, 7-8).
Of the uncials, the evidence is divided. Sinaiticus has kurios, while A and B have Iesous.

III.The Internal Evidence: Jude 5

See Bruce Meztger’s Textual
Commentary, Second Edition, prepared for the UBS 4 (pp. 657-658). It gives [ho] kurios a “D” reading but retains it
nonetheless.

He notes that the committee believed the reading of Iesous “was difficult to the point of
impossibility,and explained its origin in terms of transcriptional oversight”
(mistaking the nomina sacra for kurios [kappa sigma] as that for Jesus [iota
sigma]).

He adds that nowhere else in Jude does the name Jesus appear
alone but as Jesus Christ.

He also notes that though the
Iesous reading is well attested it would be “strange and unparalleled” to
ascribe to Jesus this OT action.

Here is a place where text criticism of the twentieth century
(Metzger) is set against that of the twenty-first century (NA28)!

IV.Conclusion:

Though the variation here is slight, it introduces the
peculiar challenge of an unstable text for those who embrace the ever-changing
modern critical text. One might argue that the modern text offers a high
Christology by attributing to Jesus divine action in the exodus. But this would
actually argue against it, since “the Lord’ is a reading of equal antiquity
that apparently resists this pious tendency. Metzger’s explanation of confusion
over the nomina sacra seems more than
plausible.

The “new reading” was adapted by the ESV and the NET Bible
even before NA28 was published. It has now been adopted by the NLT (2015) and
the Christian Standard Bible (2017).

These are the first vernacular translations to offer this
reading since the Protestant Reformation. But is this change warranted? I do
not think it is. We should stick with the traditional reading.

Friday, June 23, 2017

The next day John seeth Jesus coming
unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the
world (John 1:29).

John
the Baptist here declares one of the great inspired images for the Lord Jesus
Christ. He is the Lamb of God. Calvin observes: “By the word Lamb [John]
alludes to the ancient sacrifices of the Law.” Most likely, it would call to
mind to Jewish ears the Passover lamb, whose blood was smeared over the
doorposts to save the lives of all those under its marking.

This
image speaks to his mildness, his gentleness, his passive obedience to the will
of the Father. And it speaks to the atoning sacrifice of his life. Isaiah
writes of him, “He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his
mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her
shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7).

In
John’s vision of heaven in Revelation 5, he is told, “behold, the Lion of the
tribe of Juda,” (v. 5), but then he records, “And I beheld and lo, in the midst
of the throne and of the four beasts and in the midst of the elders, stood a
Lamb as it had been slain…..” (v. 6). Later John hears the voice of many angels
saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power,
and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing” (v.
12).

The
first mention of Jesus in John’s Gospel has the Baptist ascribing to him the
title, “The Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” The shadow the
cross falls over the very first mention of his name. You do not understand
Jesus unless you understand the cross.

We
need also to address the significance of the phrase “which taketh away the sin
of the whole world.” Our Arminian friends will take this as a prooftext to
argue for their view of the extent of the atonement. They will say that this
teaches universal atonement, rather than particular redemption (limited
atonement). But that is to misread this title and risk falling into the error
of universal salvation. Calvin gets it right when he says that this refers to
the extension of his favor “indiscriminately to the whole human race,” both
Jews and Gentiles. It is not that all men are saved by the death of Christ, but
all kinds of men, men from all nations, men from the whole world.

We completed another week of Vacation Bible School at CRBC, meeting Monday-Thursday (June 19-22) this week. Our Bible Study focused on the Life of Daniel (Daniel chapters 1-6). There was also time for recreation, songs, crafts, and games. Each day ended with lunch on site. Great time had by all!

Friday, June 16, 2017

And of his fulness
have all we received, and grace for grace (John 1:16).

John here declares that the fulness [pleroma] of God which rests in Christ (cf. Colossians 2:9) rests also
in us. The “all” here does not mean all men without exception, but all saved
men. There is a diving line between men who know, trust, and are united to
Christ and those who stand outside of Christ.

Christians are the recipients of something that other men do not
receive. By union with Christ they receive his fulness, and, John continues, it
is “grace for grace [charin anti charitos].”

What does “grace for grace” mean?
There are at least two possibilities.

First: It may have the sense of a super-abundance of grace, of
grace piled up on top of grace. Imagine stacks upon stacks of firewood. We have
cord upon cord of grace in Christ. In this sense, it speaks to the grace of
salvation.

Matthew Poole:

Nor have we received drops [of grace], but grace upon grace; not
only knowledge and instruction, but the love and favor or God, and spiritual
habits, in proportion to the favour and grace which Christ hath (allowing for
our short capacities).

Matthew Henry:

Grace for grace is an abundance of grace, grace upon grace … one
grace heaped on another.; as skin for
skin is skin after skin, even all that a man has (Job 2:4). It is a
blessing poured out, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.

Second: it may have the sense of grace that is always
replenished, supplied, or even replaced by even more grace. In this sense, it
speaks to sustaining and sanctifying grace. The Christian never exhausts the
supply of God’s grace for God’s ongoing work in his life.

Caution: We must be wise stewards of this assurance and not
presume upon it to act in a lawless (antinomian) manner. Indeed, such a false
path will not be continuously followed by one who is genuinely converted.

This is the great benefit that has come to sinful men through the
Word becoming flesh. Grace for grace, grace upon grace, heaps of grace, a
super-abundance of grace. Grace also that sustains us for the living of the
Christian life through whatever challenges, whatever setbacks, whatever
discouragements we might face.

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

I have posted my book review of Nicholas P. Lunn, The Original Ending of Mark: A New Case for
the Authenticity of Mark 16:9-20, which appears in Puritan Reformed Journal, Vol. 9, No. 2
(July 2017): 348-351 (read it here or here).

Monday, June 12, 2017

From the
conclusion to last Sunday afternoon’s sermon on God’s Decree and Foreknowledge
(from the 1689 Baptist confession, chapter three, paragraph 2):

In 1642 John Owen wrote a treatise with the title
“A Display of Arminianism” in which he responded point by point to the
objections of Arminianism to the Biblical doctrine of election. The subtitle, in
good Puritan fashion reads, in part: “A discovery of the old Pelagian idol
free-will, with the new goddess contingency.” Thus, the Arminian idea that
God’s decree is contingent or conditioned by man’s response, Owen declared to
be a “new goddess,” that is, a “false goddess.”

Chapter 3 is titled “Of the prescience or
foreknowledge of God, and how it is questioned and overthrown by the Arminians.”
His point is that God knows all things not because he anticipates various
contingencies but that he has sovereignly decreed all things.

Owen closes that chapter with a meditation on the
pastoral benefits of rightly understanding God’s decree and his foreknowledge:

Amidst all our
afflictions and temptations, under whose pressure we should else faint and
despair, it is no small comfort to be assured that we do nor can suffer nothing
but what his hand and counsel guides unto us, what is open and naked before his
eyes, and whose end and issue he knoweth long before; which is a strong motive
to patience, a sure anchor of hope, a firm ground of consolation (Works, Vol. 10, p. 29).

Friday, June 09, 2017

And the Word was made
flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only
begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth (John 1:14).

John 1:14 is the most important and illuminating statement of
the doctrine of the incarnation in Scripture.

It begins: “And the Word was made [ginomai: to become] flesh….” The Word here, again, is the
pre-existent Logos. To say that he was made flesh is to say that he became
fully a man.

Calvin, however, notes that John, under the Spirit’s
prompting, specifically used the word flesh (sarx) to stress the wonder of the divine condescension. So, he
writes:

He intended to show to what a mean
and despicable condition the Son of God, on our account, descended from the
height of his heavenly glory.

For:

When Scripture speaks of man
contemptuously, it calls him flesh…. Yet the Son of God stooped so low as to
take upon himself that flesh, subject to so many miseries.

Take a moment and just touch your own flesh and consider this
fabulous claim: The Word was made flesh!

There were many attempts from the earliest days to deny this
declaration. We see this even in the NT itself. Compare John’s references in
his epistles to “antichrists” or false teachers who denied that Jesus came “in
the flesh” (1 John 4:1-3; 2 John 1:7).

In modern times, many challenges to the Christian
faith come from those who deny the full deity of Christ, but in the early days
the more common challenge was apparently from those who denied the full
humanity of Jesus.

Aside from those who simply denied that the Word
took on flesh, there were other distortions that arose in early Christianity:

Apollinarius argued that Jesus had a
human body but not a human soul.

Nestorius argued that Christ was two persons in
one body: He was a divine person and a human person, but not one person.

Eutyches said that he was one person but that he
had only one nature and that one nature was a mixture of divine and human.

A consensus emerged and was affirmed among
orthodox (right-believing Christians) that the Christ was fully a man (having
both a human body and soul) and that he was one person (contra Nestorius) with
two distinct natures: fully God, and fully man (contra Eutyches).

This creedal consensus is reflected in our
confession of faith. See chapter 8 “Of Christ the Mediator” paragraph 2 of the
1689 Baptist Confession:

The
Son of God, the second person in the Holy Trinity, being very and eternal God,
the brightness of the Father's glory, of one substance and equal with Him who
made the world, who upholds and governs all things He has made, did, when the
fullness of time was complete, take upon Him man's nature, with all the
essential properties and common infirmities of it,yet without sin;being
conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, the Holy Spirit
coming down upon her: and the power of the Most High overshadowing her; and so
was made of a woman of the tribe of Judah, of the seed of Abraham and David
according to the Scriptures;so
that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures were inseparably joined together
in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion; which person is
very God and very man, yet one Christ, the only mediator between God and man.

This is likewise taught in the Baptist catechism:

Q 25: How did Christ, being the Son of God, become man?

A:
Christ, the Son of God, became man by taking to himself a true body, and a
reasonable soul; being conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of
the virgin Mary, and born of her, yet without sin.

If we want to be faithful Christians, we have to
get our understanding of Jesus right. We have to know who this one is to whom
we are giving our lives and our allegiance. We honor Christ when we think
rightly of Christ.

Thursday, June 08, 2017

I am teaching an online Survey of the NT class this summer.
At the start of the class I require students to read an article I wrote titled “A
Brief Guide to English Bible Translations” [Note: The article provides an
overview of various translations and provides a list of translations approved
for use in the class. To reduce costs, the class is an “open source” course,
so I give the students freedom to make use of their choice of translation, as
long as it is not a paraphrase.]. I then have them post to a discussion board a
report on what translation they plan to use for the class.

Here is a summary of the preferences reported by students in
the discussion board posts from the summer 2017 class (with 30 enrolled
students):

KJV

NIV

ESV

NKJV

NRSV

KJV
& NIV

KJV
& ESV

Unclear
or no reply

12

7

2

1

1

1

1

5

The overall preferred
translation was the KJV. For KJV users, a common reason offered for use was that this was the
version the person had grown up using in their church or family. Examples:

“I will use the KJV because that is
the version that I grew up with and am most familiar with.”

“My grandfather believes that the
only correct version is the KJV….”

The KJV “is what I grew up using.”

The KJV is “what I’ve used since I
was younger growing up in the church.”

One said, “I’ve grown up learning
from this bible.”

Another said this was “my grandmother’s
bible” and it might be a good idea “to start passing [it] down to new
generations.”

Some noted a preference for the KJV based on its style:

One noted the KJV is “simple and easy
to understand.”

Another noted she preferred the KJV
because it is the “most poetic.”

While others specifically noted they preferred a modern
translation over the KJV due to style:

One noted, “it can be a little
daunting and makes for exhausting reading if it’s not in plain English.”

The second most
preferred translation was the NIV. Several noted this was the version they owned or regularly
used. Students said:

The NIV is “the
copy [I have] at home.”

The NIV “is
the copy I have received and read … most of my life.”

One student noted he had read little
of the Bible but received a copy of the NIV “as a graduation present” from his
family’s church.

Another said the NIV was the version “my
parents got me for Christmas.”

Some noted a preference for the NIV based on style. Comments:

“I find the
NIV much easier to follow, obey, and understand.”

“I
appreciate the simplicity in which it is written.”

Preferences for other translations were scattered. One said
she was using the ESV because this was the version she had, and another noted
that a new pastor in the church had just switched church usage from the KJV to
the ESV. The lone NRSV user noted this had been the version used in a previous
religion class.

Reflections:

I find these responses to be typical of those that I have
received from earlier offerings of this course. These responses show that despite
the prevalence of modern translations, the KJV still maintains a significant grip
as the traditional text for English speakers. BTW, most of the students are
younger (under age 30). When many think of the English Bible, they still think
of the KJV. Among modern translations, the NIV is clearly the most widely read
and preferred. Other evangelical (NKJV, ESV, etc.) or mainline Protestant
(NRSV) translations register only scattered acknowledgement.

These findings suggest that Mark Twain’s quip might be well
applied to the KJV: “rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” For
more on this, see my related 2014
blog post on this topic.